Last week was by all accounts a tough week for the President as he tried to convince Americans that Social Security is in crisis. Due to poor poll results, the word the Republicans have used for years (privatization) was discarded for the new “personal accounts.” They had to spend time and effort to convince members of the media to go with the newspeak.

On another front, the President cited statistics discredited by his own Social Security Administration in a failed attempt to get African American leaders to support privatization. His argument boiled down to “black people don’t live as long, so they get shafted by Social Security because they don’t live long enough to collect their share.” I’m almost tempted to grant Bush his premise so that we can move on to the actual ways that minorities get shafted, including the factors that lead to lower life expectancy like inner city pollution, poverty, military service and more. At least he’d be forced to answer for the relaxing of environmental regulations, the rise in poverty over the last four years and his little adventure in Iraq. But because he bases his pitch on life expectancy including infant mortality, he ignores the fact that an average African American who works until age 65 will live roughly the same amount of time as the average Caucasian. Unless the President thinks that there are African American infants out there paying into Social Security (and with his “ownership society,” who knows) this is one area where African Americans don’t get shafted.

Aside from being completely dishonest and crass, this tactic strikes me as morbid. As if using 9-11 for partisan advantage wasn’t enough, now it’s time to exploit and manipulate a group of people already suffering disproportionately at the hands of administration policies by telling them that they are losing financially because they don’t live long enough. Maybe he needs to spend more time with the Congressional Black Caucus:

Rep. Melvin Watt (D-NC): We were very methodical about making the presentation. I would call on a member to describe some of the dramatic disparities that continue and then I would call on a member to talk about some of the policy things that the Congressional Black Caucus could support to eliminate or reduce those disparities. At some point in the conversation I started to hear kind of visible grunts. It was like every time a new piece of information was hitting the president, he was being hit in the stomach. So, I know it was having an impact on him. But the breadth of what we were presenting was so much that we weren’t really looking to get a response yesterday.

Judy Woodruff (CNN): Literally, an audible grunt from the president?

Watt: Yes, you know, like you’re being hit in the stomach or groin or in — look of disbelief that the disparities are so dramatic in a number of these areas.

When the President wants support from a certain constituency, he gives them something concrete in return for it. Corporate executives and the idle rich get tax breaks. Big business gets deregulation. Church groups get religion written into law. Small-government conservatives get program cuts. Citizens screaming for 9-11 payback get revenge in the form of an unrelated war in Iraq. When he wants support from African Americans, they get lies wrapped in good old-fashioned race-baiting.

At the same time, Republicans are trying to repackage themselves as…the party of civil rights.

The History of the Republican Party is as remarkable as it is untold. In commemoration of the 150th Anniversary of the Republican Party, the Republican Policy Committee has produced the 2005 Republican Freedom Calendar, to put some of the many important Republican achievements in advancing civil rights before today’s students, families, and citizens from all walks of life who wish to be better informed about our national heritage.

Yes, they produced a 2005 Republican Freedom Calendar, with Abraham Lincoln on the cover no less. I didn’t know Lincoln personally, but I’d be willing to bet that he would have rather been French than be associated with today’s Congressional Republicans. The current President won’t meet with the NAACP. There are no Republican members of Congress who are African American. The day after celebrating Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day with King’s widow in 2004, President Bush used a recess appointment to appoint Judge Charles Pickering to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Pickering’s critics…question his record on civil rights. They note that he has been critical of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. They also point to a law review article he wrote more than 40 years ago, suggesting ways to amend Mississippi’s law banning interracial marriages so that it would pass constitutional muster.

With this kind of track record, it’s no wonder that Bush couldn’t crack 10% of the African American vote or convince their leaders to go along with his plan to privatize Social Security.